Programming Language Quotes

"Claiming Java is easier than C++ is like saying that K2 is shorter than Everest." -- Larry O'Brien (editor, Software Development)

"PL/I and Ada started out with all the bloat, were very daunting languages, and got bad reputations (deservedly). But C++ has shown that if you slowly bloat up a language over a period of years people don't seem to mind as much." -- James Hague, 1992

"It's kind of pathetic actually that we are all sitting here talking about Forth. It is not the wave of the future. It's never been the wave of the future. It's not within our power to make it the wave of the future." -- ForthLanguage creator ChuckMoore, 1999

"C has all the expressive power of two dixie cups and a string." -- JamieZawinski

"If a system is to serve the creative spirit, it must be entirely comprehensible to a single individual." -- DanIngalls on SmalltalkLanguage

"APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection." -- EwDijkstra, 1975

"The architecture of almost every computer today is designed to optimize the performance of Fortran programs and its operating-system-level sister, C." -- RichardGabriel

"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off." -- BjarneStroustrup

In PerlLanguage, there are many different ways to do the same thing. But there are also many very similar ways to do very different things. -- anon

The very definition of hell is having to maintain someone else's Perl code. -- Anonymous

Perl - The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption. -- Keith Bostic

From PainfulLanguage: Perl as a language has less a design than a thousand special features flying in close formation.

LarryWall on PerlLanguage:

In general, if you think something isn't in Perl, try it out, because it usually is.
Perl is, in intent, a cleaned up and summarized version of that wonderful semi-natural language known as "Unix".
Perl is the Cliff Notes of Unix.
What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?

and on ProgrammingLanguages in general:

A language's practicality is inversely proportional to the number of theoretical axes the language has to grind.
I think ugly can be beautiful, and that beautiful can get ugly real quick. I think in particular of Lisp, which is the most beautiful language in the world, and every program in Lisp is real ugly.

Because he says things like this, I find it very hard to take anything coming from LarryWall, especially Perl, seriously. Imagine someone saying "I think in particular of French, which is the most beautiful language in the world, and everything spoken in French is real ugly."

An EnglishSecondLanguage? friend of mine once commented that he loved and loathed English. Its flexibility lent it perfectly to word play, making it a wonderfully expressive language, and a language in which almost any concept was fairly easily explained even if there wasn't already a word for it. He particularly enjoyed the effortless puns of native speakers. What he loathed was all the special cases, such as I before E, except after C, except... To me, this sounds a lot like loving LISP and yet thinking it's ugly. LISP doesn't have an eval statement because it *is* an eval statement, you don't have to cast anything to treat code as data. Closures aren't special cases, they're pretty much a natural occurrence. Things that require herculean effort in other languages are often trivial in LISP. However, LISP is a language full of brackets, written in PolishNotation, without many functions that high-level programmers take for granted.

I agree with all of that, except - which functions are missing that are usually taken for granted?

I find LarryWall's rather glib style to be highly preferable to the unyielding arrogance of certain other language inventors I could name... (and no, neither of the two fellows I have in mind are from the Lisp community.)

The utter lack of sophistication in Larry Wall's view of Lisp is well summarized by his famous quote: "Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in." (see http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/7700fb02a2750032?dmode=source)

In reply to someone who said "SENDMAIL config files are more readable than perl."

Also see AlanKayQuotes, ErikNaggumQuotes

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